Day 8 - Chengdu and Pandas!

This morning we head off to the Chengdu Panda Research Base.  It is about a 20-30 min drive out of the center of the city.  Today we will pay $150-160 US for the girls to hold baby pandas.  For those of you planning a trip - you'll need the cash, Yuan or US, no cards taken.  While a $150 is a lot of money for 1 min of holding a baby panda, I keep telling myself that I'm not paying for the panda holding, instead, I am supporting the reaserch that is being done to help the survival of this species where only ~1000 pandas live in the wild and ~ 500 in captivity.

 

The Panda holding was scheduled for about 9:40am, so we had about 45 min to see the nursery and the kindergarten.  Then we lined up with the girls.  Only those who make a donation are allowed inside, so we were relying on the girls and the staff to take the pictures.  The adults stood outside watching as others came back out from their panda holding experience.  People were aglow from the experience.  It made me want to scrounge up another 1000 yuan and hold a panda myself!  The girls were no different and they got GREAT pictures.

 

After that we walked around and saw more pandas - both giant and red - most of the pandas were failry active - eating bamboo, scratching their backs against trees and wrestling with each other.  Then we watched a short film on the Panda's lifecycle and current research.  The Panda research park is the nicest green park we've been to - bamboo everywhere, pheasants walk the grounds, and flower beds everywhere.

 

We had a another delicious Chinese lunch somewhere.... ;-) and then it was back to the hotel for some down time...not sure where we ate dinner!
 

Joyce